The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality and Law-Fast Shipping

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AnEnglish court in 1736 described rape as an accusation “easily to be madeand hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused,though never so innocent.”To prove the crime, the law required a womanto physically resist, to put up a “hue and cry,” as evidence of herunwillingness. Beginning in the 1970s, however, feminist andvictim-advocacy groups began changing attitudes toward rape so the crimeis now seen as violent in itself: the legal definition of rape nowincludes everything from the sadistic serial rapist to theeighteen-year-old who has consensual sex with a fourteen-year-old.

Thisinclusiveness means there are now more rapists among us. And more ofrape’s camp followers: the prison-makers, the community watchdogs,law-and-order politicians, and the real-crime/real-time Place examines the ambiguity of rape law bypresenting cases where guilt lies, but lies uneasily, and leads intolarger ethical questions of what defines guilt, what is justice, andwhat is considered just punishment. Assuming a society can and must bejudged by the way it treats its most despicable members, The Guilt Project looks at the way the American legal system defines, prosecutes, and punishes sex offenders, how this Dateline NBC justicehas transformed our conception of who is guilty and how they ought tobe treated, and how this has come to undo our deeper humanity